The people who voted Libertarian were not likely to have voted for those Republicans had the LP candidates not been available and the outcome would have been unchanged. For some reason, that never seems to occur to people who make this argument.
That somehow third-party candidates cost Republicans votes and or elections has to be one of the most often repeated and most ignorant arguments on the political landscape today. It is also a singularly arrogant argument since it implies that somehow the Republican candidate had some right to those votes.
A pox on thick-headed party hacks of every stripe, I say.
Yet Libertarians come here asserting how conservative they are and how we should follow. Rhetorical question. How is the conservative agenda advanced with Washington's Marie Cantwell (D)rather than Slade Gordon (R)?